Hurt/Comfort: Negative Space
by Rackham Rose
Summary: Fourth and probably last in a series--reflections on a (temporarily) empty bed.


**Negative Space**  
  
  
Last in the series.  
For Becky and Jess, because they're too damn inspiring.   
*`-,--  
  
The strangest things run through your head on a rainy morning.  
  
I remember an art class I had, years ago, before I stopped going to school, and something the teacher insisted we learn as thoroughly as possible. Any image is made up of both positive and negative space; the positive space is what you see, and the negative space is what surrounds that.  
  
I'd like to ask that teacher now--is the hollow in the mattress where your lover's body lay an hour previous an example of the negative?  
  
I think that's what we are now. Lovers. After staying the night in someone's arms you can't help but become that--in sleep your defences, natural and mental, drop completely. If that isn't intimacy, nothing can be.  
  
And we've always been trying to pull down each other's defences, haven't we?   
  
I woke this morning and his lips were so close to mine I could taste his breath. He was up before me, and had had a cigarette; it didn't take long for the two of us to slide into the familiar pattern of kisses, and then almost before I knew what was happening we were making love again, his hands soft and eager against my skin.  
  
He surprises me sometimes. Even now, while all I can see of him is the shape his body left in the mattress, he leaves little reminders that his is a life separate from my own veins.  
  
I know that if I reach over and touch that space, it will still be warm--for someone so tall, he has a very fast metabolism. When his chest is pressed against mine it's like stepping into the heartbeat of a fever.  
  
He still smells the way he did nine years ago, and that smell clings to the sheets--complicated but clean, a solid whole from so many different elements. Nine years is such a long stretch of time for change, for the little adjustments that suddenly add up to leaps and bounds of growth. And yet there are only the subtlest changes in both of us, tiny hidden surprises that come out in a stray word or gesture.  
  
Or maybe the great changes have ocurred, and I haven't noticed. I've never been particularly good at noticing things like that.   
  
Except in him. I don't think he knows, but I do notice; I'm learning every detail of him, slowly but surely, trying to take it all in before destiny forces one of us to fall.  
  
I think, considering my Wish, it'll have to be me.   
  
I don't really know if he'll look at the space my body leaves empty on this mattress and feel the absence like I do, quietly upsetting, cold above all else. I don't think he'll ever look over at me while I'm alive and feel love--not pure love, not love deeper than the simple need that brings us together now.   
  
And some part of me insists I don't know him at all, that I've been wrong in thinking the heart is merely a muscle.  
  
Nine years is such a long time. I've missed my chances to ask, to honestly explore the size of this dull little ache the memory of his warmth brings. Now all I can do is wait for fate to kick in and hope that I can figure out what to say to him before the end. Or if I need to say anything at all.  
  
The rain sounds less layered now... it has for several minutes, actually. He's probably out of the shower; I know he's already had coffee and toast and another cigarette. All I have to do is wait and he'll come back in, looking for his clothes, and we can argue about which sock belongs to whom before we start to feel morning slip into afternoon.  
  
His footsteps pad toward me; I look up and he is wet and draped in a bathrobe too big for him. His good eye settles on mine, and for a moment we simply stare, lovers adjusting to the suddenness of each other's presence.  
  
"Good morning, Seishirou-san," he murmurs.  
  
And somehow I feel myself smiling.  
  
"Come back to bed, Subaru-kun."  
  
And he smiles back, just a little--just with his eye, really--and slips out of that damp bathrobe, into my arms, where he stays. 


End file.
